Another idol toppled


So how about that Paula Deen, huh? First there’s the whole thing with producing recipes for cheeseburgers served between two doughnuts while diabetic, and then there’s the racism. Isn’t American life interesting?

She has faced a volley of criticism this week over her remarks in a deposition for a discrimination lawsuit by a former employee. In the document, she admitted she had used racial slurs, tolerated racist jokes and condoned pornography in the workplace.

Part of her down-home charm, isn’t it? Wasn’t that the idea?

Ms. Deen has managed to offend even her most uncritical fans before, most recently in January 2012 when she announced her diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes on the same day she endorsed the diabetes drug Victoza and a lucrative collaboration with Novo Nordisk, the drug’s manufacturer. Because she had built her career on a no-holds-barred approach to sugar and fat (creating recipes like a cheeseburger patty sandwiched between two doughnuts and a Better than Sex cake made with cake mix, pudding mix, and heavy cream), she was roundly criticized for encouraging an unhealthy diet for others, hiding her illness and then trying to profit from it.

Well I’ve always liked Lidia Bastianich better anyway.

 

Comments

  1. jenBPhillips says

    I was just reading about this on Jezebel. And now she has two weird “I’m sorry you were offended, I’m really a nice person” videos out there. Creep.

  2. says

    As someone who taught himself to cook with the help of the Food Network, I’m mostly disappointed. Sure Paula made a lot of deep fried junk food, but she also taught me how to make a great pie dough. ;(

  3. michaelraymer says

    “Well what I would really like is a bunch of little [plural of n-word] to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around,” the plaintiff alleged Deen told her. “Now, that would be a true Southern wedding wouldn’t it? But we can’t do that because the media would be on me about that.”

    Notice how the problem was the potential media backlash, not her horribly racist ideas.

  4. smhll says

    With enough electrodes, we could probably design an experiment to assess whether or not her cake is actually better than sex…

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